1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to document printers and, more specifically, to systems and methods that can detect characteristics or content of a printed document and trigger an action in response.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventional printers receive documents in a variety of formats and print the contents of the documents in accordance with a proper format. For example, a printer enabled to print PostScript documents will correctly interpret Postscript commands within a document so that the document has the appearance expected by its author when it is printed. (Postscript is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated).
Today, as more and more electrical databases and computer networks are interconnected, people often have multiple data systems and destinations in which to store information. For example, a person may receive an email containing information that he wants to retain. The person may want to print some or all of the information. The person may further want to add the information to a database or to send the information to other people or destinations or to add the information to a web page. Currently, the person will need to execute several different software programs and will need to type multiple commands into the programs. He may also need to re-enter the information into one or more programs. This is not efficient and is prone to human error, since human beings occasionally forget to perform one of more of the tasks usually associated with a received document and are also prone to typographical errors.
Some conventional printers incorporate a management function in which the printer monitors its own internal functions and “phones home” for assistance if, for example, its toner is low or it is out of paper. This action is based on the printer doing “self-monitoring,” not on any monitoring of the documents to be printed.
What is needed is a printer and method that can take various actions (in addition to printing) depending on the content and characteristics of a document that is sent to it.